This specification relates to the field of home appliance safety and more particularly to an alarm for detecting obstructions in a dryer vent.
Dryer vents are a necessary part of a drying system. In a typical consumer- or commercial-grade dryer, clothes are dried with heated air. Dry, cool ambient air is pulled into the dryer and heated. The heated air extracts moisture from the wet clothes. The now-moist air must be exhausted from the system and replaced with dry air.
A result of this process is that lint and other flammable material is sometimes extracted from the clothes being dried. This lint can then be expelled with the exhaust air. Most dryers provide a lint trap to capture the bulk of this lint, but the lint traps are imperfect, and some lint will escape into the exhaust vent. If lint builds up, it can decrease the efficiency of the dryer and even present a fire hazard if lint ends up in the heating element.